Book Clubbing

All of a Kind Family

I got an email from another parent a few weeks ago alerting me to the fact that our girls and others had been discussing starting a book club.  What did I think, and was I willing to help run it, she asked.  I was thrilled.  I thought it was a great idea.  I was so happy that the girls wanted to read more and to talk about what they were reading. 

I’ve never been in a book club before (shocking I know) nor have I run one.  But I read – can there be more qualifications to head a discussion than that?

We talked a bit amongst ourselves about what books we might pick for the club.  We went back and forth between old classics and new books.  The advantage of the old classics is that we’ve already read them in most cases, and can bring the experience of reading them as a girl to our girls.  The new books might seem more exciting and relevant to the girls, but the parents aren’t going to be able to bring the same passion to them as we could to, say, Little House on the Prairie (do you know my girl has NOT read that book, or any other in the series???  Horror!) 

So when it came down to it, I knew there could only be one choice for my first book club book – All of a Kind Family by Sydney Taylor.  This series was one of my favorites growing up.  It’s the story of 5 girls growing up in a Jewish family on the lower east side of NYC.  I didn’t grow up Jewish, but I learned everything about Jewish traditions from these books.  Being an only child, the idea of sharing a bathroom and a single bedroom with 4 sisters didn’t seem so bad after reading about the adventures that Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie got into.  Imagine when the thrill of a week was the Friday trip to the library to get a new book for the week – these were simple days of basic pleasures.  Certainly we can convey a message to our about being grateful for the relative abundances that they have. 

Other books that I will be considering when it is my turn again are the Little House series and the Betsy-Tacy books – I adored the former growing up, but never read the latter.  I just got copies of the rereleased books and think the girls would really enjoy them. 

What books from your childhood are you sharing with the kids in your life?

Disney on Ice Ticket Offer and Giveaway

Most people who know me know I’m a Disney freak.  Inherited from my mom, and now passed down to my kids.  Soccer Girl’s favorite place on earth is Walt Disney World and she has written many a school paper on her experiences at the park.  IT Boy too is a fan, albeit on a smaller scale.  He’s obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Disney Channel.  It’s become his favorite show, surpassing that old standby,  class=”hiddenSpellError” pre=”">Spongebob Squarepants.  He loves doing the Hot Dog Dance - I think he’s emulating Goofy.  It’s a sanity saver for me, because it’s really the first show he will sit down and watch from start to finish. 

Last week, I got an emailing about a new Disney ice show coming to the NY area.  This seemed like the perfect family activity for us.   I used to ice skate regularly, so I knew I would have fun.  Girl would probably be ok with it, even the princesses, which she really doesn’t like anymore because middle school girls are not princess girls, humph.  Boy was the question mark, but something about the characters and the action tells me he might be ok sitting through the show.  You know, it’s not easy to find activities that the whole family can partake together and enjoy!

The kind folks at Feld Entertainment want to spread the word about a ticket offer they have for the shows at Nassau Coliseum, as well as the Prudential Center and IZOD Center in NJ.  You can get 4 tickets for $44 at a Monday-Friday matinee, or $4 off Friday night and weekend tickets by entering the code “MOM” in the MC promotion code box on Ticketmaster.  Minimum purchase of 4 tickets is required; additional tickets above 4 can be purchased at $11 each.  Offer not valid on Rinkside or VIP seating.  Cannot be combined with other offers.  Service charges & handling fees will apply.

Now, the Feld folks and Mom Central have been kind enough to give my family tickets to opening night at the IZOD Center, and to give me a four pack of tickets to give away to my loyal blog readers.  If you are interested in winning 4 tickets for November 24th, simply comment on this blog post and tell me who or what your favorite Disney character is.  You must post with your email address, and if I cannot contact the winner within 3 days, I will be forced to choose another one.  Creativity counts, but the winner will be selected by random number generator.  Contest closes November 7th at 11:59pm.  Winner will be selected when I wake up on November 8th.  Good luck!

Are you ready for some REAL football, aka soccer?

Another fall transition this year occured with Soccer Girl starting to play at a club team level.  She’s on a team in a new club that was formed by our local AYSO, called ADFH United.  The initals are for the three Rivertowns that comprise the club, namely Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry and Hastings.  No, I didn’t pick the name.  ADFH United is a part of Westchester Youth Soccer League.

She’s been having a great season so far, playing with many girls she played with last year on her AYSO travel team.  We love the old girls as well as the new girls.  Heck, the families are pretty awesome too.  We have a great time cheering the kids on during the games. 

Like many sports families, our weekends are devoted to getting the kid to and from games and practices.  Of course, it’s make easier by the fact that our home pitch is probably the best location for soccer in all of Westchester. 

ADFH’s Dobbs Ferry Waterfront pitch is right next to the Hudson River.  Gorgeous vistas and river breezes greet you as you settle down in your folding chair to watch your kids give it their all.  It’s right next to the pirate ship playground, so Boy can work off some pre-game energy before he’s strapped into his stroller to be stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey so he doesn’t fuss and complain and we can watch the match.  The place is just about perfect.  The only thing it’s missing is easy access to food and beverage, but at this weekend’s games, the Dobbs Ferry HS soccer team set up a table to sell sweatshirts and snacks, which I thought was just genius.  Pefection-on-the-Hudson even…

Here’s a shot of her team at halftime.  These photos were taken on my mobile, so I can only imagine how great the SLR shots another mom was taking will come out. 

So, if you hear me talk about going to watch the Girl play soccer, know that I am getting the best deal possible out of the experience.  And let’s hope those soccer boys return with the snack stand next week!

Transitions

*Not his actual bed

I freely admit I am no fan of fall.  Sure, apple picking, pumpkin carving and stunning foliage are nice, but they hide a bitter reality – winter.  I would be perfectly accepting of fall if it didn’t signal the return to dark days, scraping off my car in the morning, and snow and ice.  Sure, there are fall junkies out there who suck up the chill in the air just like it was a glass of freshly-pressed apple cider.  That’s not me, sorry. 

But as the seasons change, we have transitions.  In our family, IT Boy has been going through the most changes this season.  He started a program at a new school.  Instead of going in the mornings, he’s an afternoon school boy now.  He spends most mornings at my mom’s and then gets on the bus at her house to head to the school.  He’s in a CPSE program – self contained class, with 6 kids, 2 aids and 1 teacher.  Essentially, each kid has 2 helpers, which is a phenomenal ratio.  It’s slated to be a 8:1:2 class, so other kids could be added, but even so, we are so pleased. 

This school change came at the time of transitioning from Early Intervention to CPSE (preschool special education).  Some of his service providers made the transition with him, others did not.  He’s getting a similar level of services, some at home, some at school.  Overall, he’s done well, although he does have times where he acts out and gets a bit unruly.  Therapists are dealing with that as it comes up. 

Since he is an afternoon kid, he’s also had to give up on his naps.  This is without a doubt his biggest transition and what I think is probably most responsible for his, shall we say, moods.  We do let him nap on the weekends, and even if he protests a bit, he still goes down for 2-3 hours.  There isn’t really time to nap him during the week, so these naps will have to get him through. 

Another transition for him was moving from his crib into a bed.  He now sleeps on a twin mattress, which rests on a twin box spring, which rests on the floor.  Like with Soccer Girl, we felt a toddler bed was a waste of money, so we moved right to the bed, albeit with bed rails for safety.  The day I put the bed in there, we spent a lot of time in it, talking about  the “big boy bed” and exploring his new spiffy Mickey Mouse Clubhouse sheets.  He also has a set of SpongeBob  sheets, so depending on his mood, he has bedding to suit.  Overall, this was a flawless transition, and you would think he had been in a bed all his life.  If only potty training was this easy!  Yes, that’s next, but since he is showing no interest in doing anything on the potty, only in walking in on people in action in the toilet, we’re not rushing into anything. 

Our other transitioner, Soccer Girl, has made the move into Middle School look easy.  She’s adjusted to the changes well and seems to be doing well.  Since it’s *Middle School* (insert Halloween type scream here), anything can happen at any time, so we’re trying to be as prepared as any middle school parents can be.  Which is to say, hoping for the best, but preparing for the meltdowns. 

Hope your fall is going just as swimmingly.

Vaccination = yes. Flu mist = Hell NO

Last week, I took IT Boy and Soccer Girl to the doctor for their annual checkup.  Despite my making a point to remember what a horrible experience it was to take a physician-phobic 2 year old on a doctor appointment at the same time as his 9 year old sister, I repeated the error of my ways a year later.  Sure, hearing the doctor was difficult through his protesting screams.  Yes, it was painful being bit while trying to get him to lie still on the table.  Whatever. I survived.

What was a bit more in question this visit was flu shots.  Our doctor always recommends that both kids get the seasonal form of the vaccine, and this visit would have been no exception.  Except for the fact that they didn’t have any.  All they had was the mist form of the H1N1 vaccine.

I had resolved I was only giving them the seasonal vaccine, despite articles like this telling me it was ok and I should consider it.  Now I didn’t have a choice, and the doctor was telling me we should get *something* into the kids while they had it.  After some deliberation and a phonecall to Mr. IT on the train, we decided to go for it.

That night, Boy was fussy when I was putting him to bed.  He actually started wimpering, which is most unlike him.  About 1/2 an hour after he went down, he was sobbing.  I came into get him and found he was burning up, and would spend a feverish sleepless night with us in our bed.  Mr. IT kindly stayed home with him the next day.  I called the doctor (another pediatrician in the practice) who found it most unusual that he would have a reaction that strong, and suggested it was a coincidence.

My mother’s intiution told me it couldn’t be, but I agreed with him that Boy should stay home and rest, and if he still had a fever the next day to bring him in.  He did end up with a fever of 103 that night, and the next morning I did indeed bring him in to see his doctor.  We were both alarmed to see dried orange gook on his ear, which she immediately recognized as blood.  Sure enough, he had a massive double ear infection.  His right eardrum was perforated, and his left one was about to go.  She described it as a balloon being stretched over a rock…there was a ball of puss in his ear that big about to break through it.

She was horrified, and I was too.  The poor guy was in so much pain and now we knew why.  She prescribed a rather strong antibiotic which helped almost instantly.  We continued to douse him in children’s motrin and he got better rapidly.   

Why am I blogging this?  Well, it’s an interesting story for any parent to be aware of.  Your mileage may vary of course, but I would love to know if other kids getting the flu mist (H1N1 or not) have experienced such drastic ear infections.  I know my neighbor’s 13 year old who rarely gets sick had the mist and got an ear infection a day later.  Is there a connection?  Not sure.  I’m not telling parents not to vaccinate, certainly not.  I just wish Boy could have avoided the pain of the past few days – when the time comes for his next dose, I’ll be the first one looking for a big sharp needle over the mist.

Amazon vs WalMart and the $9 book

Last week, Amazon and Walmart began a battle of the behemoths as both brought prices on bestselling hardcovers down down down, ultimately to just about $9. 

It’s going to be interesting to see this play out.  Like the WSJ article suggests, it’s not just a book battle.  They’re only talking about low pricing on 10 books, not the millions that Amazon sells, or the 100’s that WalMart stocks.  The battle is more likely to be played out in other areas of the store where profit margins are more easily manipulated for the store’s gain. 

But I do see implications for publishers.  I don’t work for a publisher falling into this category, but I don’t imagine that they are taking a hit on the prices offered here.  Rather, WalMart and Amazon are taking the discount out of their profits, which at some point I suspect the books become a loss leader for them, leading customers to their marketplaces to buy more profitable items.

It does cause us to look at the $9.99 defacto price for ebooks as potentially a price that customers are looking at as the right price on bestsellers.  Will we lower prices to meet that?  Perhaps the question to ask is how we can publish to it.  Expect to see fewer of the 1000 page “mega-value” type books, and more of the “just what you need” titles in non-fiction reference.  Books where you can offer a lower price point, not by taking a margin hit, but by creating a product for that price point.  The implications are different for fiction, but I imagine that these publishers are having these discussions as well.  Creativity, while keeping in mind the needs of the customer, is what will keep publishers and publishing relevant.

If you like it, tell a friend…

Recently, I was the recipient of a note from someone in our sales group asking about why Amazon reviews for our books were dwindling.  Not in quality, in quantity. 

You see, as a book publisher, we actively encouage our authors to ask their friends to write Amazon reviews.  We ask bloggers and other key influencers to write Amazon reviews.  We ask our mothers and fathers who enjoy our books to review them on Amazon.  You name it.   It’s one of the most key things you can do to sell a book – have a positive review on it in the place of purchase.  But it’s happening less and it’s giving many of us cause for concern.

It’s simple to blame it on laziness, whether it’s on the part of the marketing team, the editor working with the book, or of the author.  But I really believe it is more than that.

I posed this very question on Twitter and Facebook some time ago and got really good feedback on why people think we are seeing fewer Amazon reviews for books.  I’ve summarized them below.

* There are too many other places that are book focused to review books.  GoodReads, WeRead, iRead and many other sites that are communities of book lovers have usurped Amazon in many cases as sites where people will review books.

* I’m more likely to review a book on my blog than to put it up on Amazon.  It’s not a step I think about.  In a sense, the process is more selfish – you review the book and you have content for your site.  You use Twitter to promote the review, but also to drive traffic to your site.  There really isn’t a similar benefit that Amazon offers. 

My ex-colleague Deb expands on that…

I do think that people are caring less and less about what strangers have to say about products and more and more about what their friends/ family/ colleagues have to say. Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and things like Get Glue let us do this in new ways.

Tracee Sioux agrees:

People no longer feel the need to comment on blogs, Amazon, etc. b/c they can recommend or comment on their Facebook pages where their own intimates will know what they think and how they feel. Their compulsion to share is satiated.

* My colleague Graham from our UK office suggested that the novelty in writing these reviews and getting the recognition on the Amazon site has worn off. 

Writing a great review doesn’t get you a free product, notoriety, or necessarily kudos amongst your peers, so why bother??

* It can be complicated and annoying – Graham again…

I’d also add that the Amazon reminder system for writing reviews can actually get a bit annoying with several emails telling you to go review a product… and may actually have deterred some people from posting a review, just because they junked the email and didn’t follow up.

My dad adds:

A lot more than a little bit annoying. I buy 3 or 4 things at a time & they want a review from each seller. Also they will not let it go with just checking the number of stars.

 

Additionally, I’ve heard from international authors that they cannot post reviews on the US site unless they have an account and have made a purchase from it.  Vice versa applies as well.

 

So what can Amazon do better here?

 

1. Make it easier to write the reviews.  I know they put in a lot of roadblocks to verify the users as real customers, but it’s made it too difficult to write them.  Allow users with one Amazon account to post on different international sites. 

 

2. Enable ways to share reviews across sites.  No reason a great review from someone’s blog couldn’t go up on an Amazon page.  I’d love to see blogger with an Amazon button next to their Digg, Facebook, and Twitter buttons, that enables a review to be shared on the bookselling site.

 

3.  Find some way to reward people who write the reviews.  I know they have a “helpful v not helpful” vote feature – what about allowing people who write reviews to somehow get traffic back to their sites, even if it’s just on their reviewer profile page?

 

 Those are just a few – what ways do you think Amazon could encourage reviewers to write more reviews on their site?  How can authors and publishers work to get more reviews up on their books?

Back to Basics

I had an interesting conversation with 2 very cool women at BlogHer last month.  Specifically, I stopped by Bridget Brennan’s book signing and stayed to chat with her for a bit.  After yaking for about a half an hour, we were joined by another woman and the topic turned to publishing and book promotion.  They posed the question to me of what I thought was the most important thing an author could do to promote his or her book.

They started to say “start a blog”, “Tweet”, “develop your platform”, and I stopped them.

No.

None of the above.

Amazon.  Listing page for your book.  Where customers make the go no-go decision to buy the book. 

Authors, have you checked out your Amazon page lately?

Maybe you’ve peeked once or twice, to see your rankings, but have you REALLY looked at it?

What should you be looking for?  Let’s start with a few key items:

* Have you posted author comments?  Welcoming customers to your page is like welcoming them in a physical store, and walking them right over to the shelf where your book is sold – the online “handsell”

* Have you asked your friends and followers to review the book?  Would you be more likely to buy a book if others had reacted positively to it?  Duh!

* Is your book featured in Search Inside the Book?  Another great way to build interest in your title.

*Heck, is all the publication information correct?  Sometimes even the best of systems can break down.

I posed these questions to Gary Vanyerchuk early one Sunday morning when he was cooking up book promotion ideas.  It was the subject of a blog post that got his attention, and hopefully helped other authors get back to basics.

I don’t want to neglect our other partners in online bookselling – Barnes and Noble, Borders.com, BAM.com and Indiebound.com definitely are key sites for selling books, but don’t offer authors as many opportunities to help promote their sites as Amazon does.  I recommend that authors link to all of them in their promotions, and do what they can on the title listing pages.

Blogs, Twitter feeds, and other social media vehicles sure are sexy, but when it comes down to making the sale or not, you have to make the sale.  Quality information on a title listing page helps do that.  So be sure to talk to your publisher to make sure your Amazon listing page is everything it can be.  You’ll be glad you did.

Back to school (almost)

It’s kind of weird to have a 2 week summer vacation, but that’s the life of the IT Boy.  Last Friday was the final day for Boy at his early intervention pre-school.  The day after Labor Day, he will start in at a new CPSE pre-school.  That means for us 2 weeks without school and very few outside school services to coordinate and schedule.  Dare I say that it’s going to be a most excellent two weeks for the ITs! 

Old pre-school held a “goodbye circle” as a sort of graduation for the kids leaving school.  I wasn’t able to attend as I was on a business trip, but they were kind enough to perform it for me when I visited the school the prior week to bring in cupcakes for Boy’s birthday.  His actual birthday falls on Labor Day, so he’s not in school then.  However, he’s so into singing “Happy Birthday” and eating “Happy Birthday cake” that I couldn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate at the old school and the new school. 

I didn’t realize that they were doing the program just for me…I figured I would show up with some cupcakes and be on my merry way.  Seeing all the boys, but most especially mine, able to sit in a circle, listen to their teachers and even perform a little was a bit overwhelming.  I remember 18 months ago walking into that same room and seeing the kids in there and wondering if my little guy would ever be able to do what they were doing.  Blessedly, he has achieved all that and more.  I am so grateful to the school and all the teachers and therapists who have worked so hard to support him.  Most of all I am proud of him, for (really) not knowing what he is working for but at the same time giving his all and coming so far.  Love you, little man!

Celeb-u-mania at BlogHer-2009 Author Edition

It isn’t a BlogHer without a celebrity spotting.  And this one was pretty darn cool.

That’s me with the most gracious and wonderful Jen Lancaster – we were both in the Blog To Book session.  I won’t go into depth about the session, because it wasn’t the most helpful session for wanna-be-published-authors, IMHO.  I spent most of it going, “Seriously???” and reading texts from fellow outraged colleagues.   A bright spot was when Jen commented about how important her relationship is with her publisher, in an effort to counter the “self publishing is for everyone!” trend.  I’m not against self publishing, but, hey, it’s not for everyone.  Considering there was no one from a publishing house or anyone who was an agent on the panel, Jen’s thoughful comment was the closest we came to having some representation there. 

Anyhow, she was charming and not at all frightened when I stormed at her with the camera.  I think it’s hard to tell who is cuter, but if you saw her adorable madras pants, it would be her game to lose.